What Prince Taught Me About Love. And Sex. And Time.

In my family's living room when I was a kid, there was one of those massive 1950s cabinet stereos, with a sliding wood top that concealed a turntable, and on the front, a dial the size of my hand, which controlled the AM/FM radio. If the weather conditions were just right, if it was overcast and the air was moist enough, this beast would pick up WESL, a tiny, 800-watt AM station that operated out of East St. Louis, the majority African-American city just over the Mississippi River. WESL played hip-hop before anyone else, plus George Clinton and the weirder, dirtier stuff from the Ohio Players. You never knew what you were going to get on WESL, but it was sure to be more interesting than the Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton you'd get on St. Louis' FM pop stations.

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One day in 1981, the conditions were just right. I sat my 10-year-old self in front of that massive stereo and tuned into WESL just as Dr. Jockenstein announced a new track called "Controversy," from a guy from Minneapolis named Prince. And as the sky rumbled outside, a menacingly funky beat snaked out of the speakers. A voice I'd never heard before asked "Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?" The voice recited the Lord's Prayer. The voice said, over and over: "People call me rude. I wish we all were nude. I wish there were no black and white, I wish there were no rules."

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I was stunned, confronted with foundational identity questions of my own, and compelled to dance. I was charmed and terrified and I wanted to take all my clothes off.

It was the full Prince experience, pretty much all at once.

When the weather cleared up, I rode my bike to the West County Mall to investigate. The cover of Controversy didn't clear up the question of whether he was black or white or straight or gay or even man or woman. But I snapped it up, because I could—he wouldn't release "Darling Nikki" and become the reason for explicit material warning labels on albums until 1984. I carried it home and hid it from my parents. Thirty-five years later, it's playing in my own living room, and it still sounds like it's from some kind of sexy future we're too stupid to get to.

Prince turned out to have been everywhere in those early years. If "Dirty Mind" was too dirty for you, there was The Time, which was just Prince with Morris Day as frontman. If it wasn't dirty enough for you, there was Vanity 6, which was Prince as three women in fishnets. And this was all before "1999" made him a pop star. Before "Purple Rain" and "Raspberry Beret" and Sheila E. and "Nothing Compares 2 U" and "Batdance" and the glyph. Before he took Sheena Easton—sweet, safe Sheena Easton from the boring pop stations—and made her sing "Let's get 2 rammin'."

Prince toyed with sexuality and spirituality and gender in ways people are still afraid to do. Prince was whatever Prince wanted to be on any given day, and he made it safe for you to do the same. You think I'm dirty or sinful or gay? he said. Maybe you're right. What's it to you? Prince unleashed whatever freak might have lived inside of you, and if you didn't have one, maybe you should be ashamed.

In 1985, there was a 20-minute live Prince video that MTV showed pretty much every hour on the hour. It was a medley of "Baby I'm A Star" and "I Would Die 4 U" that ended with a very long, never-boring guitar solo, at the end of which Prince's guitar literally ejaculated. The neck shot white foam all over the crowd, and the crowd roared. He has pulled pretty much all of his music off of YouTube, so you'll have to take my word for it, but it's true: men and women, straight and gay, atheist and devout, parents and children—they left that show with Prince's guitar jizz all over their faces, clothes and hair, and they loved it.

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I was in Prince's presence exactly once. He was to make an appearance on Total Request Live in 1999 to premiere the video for "The Greatest Romance Ever Sold." We built the whole hour around him. The show started at 4:00. He got there around 4:50.

Carson Daly said, "We were expecting you a little earlier, Prince, but we're happy to have you."

Prince said, "I don't use time."

Carson asked, "So what do you use?"

Prince considered the question for a moment, leaned into the microphone and said, simply: "Truth."

It is a testament to the power of Prince that everyone in that studio thought: "Yeah, that sounds right."

(Also, in his entourage there was one massive security guard whose job was to hold the swear jar; anyone who took the Lord's name in vain was asked to put in a dollar. Truth.)

The only time I caught him in concert was during his residency at the Forum in Inglewood a few years back. He played a few shows a week there for a month or two, and capped the ticket price at $25. The set list was different every night—from the very beginning, Prince's set lists were like snowflakes—and he would play anywhere between two and six encores. Sometimes, in between encores, he'd just ride his bike around the stage for a few minutes. He let the audience sing his dirtier lyrics, because his Jehovah's Witness faith would not allow him to do the job himself. You were in for a good four hours.

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In the middle of the show I saw, there was a segment where the drummer drummed and Prince shook his ass. Left-right-left, boom-boom-bang. That's all that happened, it went on for about four minutes, and it never wore out its welcome. Prince, well into his 50s by then, told a story with his buttocks, and it was riveting throughout. The man could do anything.

But all of the bumping and grinding would have come to nothing if he weren't also the greatest musician of all time. Watch this performance of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," wherein he takes a stage with Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty, Steve Winwood, and a backing band of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers, and calmly, confidently eats their lunch.

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Prince was not talented at music, Prince was made of music.

The rest of the day is canceled, world. Close your laptop, put on "Jack U Off," and do what comes naturally to you. Religious conversion or no, he would want it that way.

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